A Suggested Four Week Unit of Study in Poetry: Grades 6-12
Introduction: Students Come to Us with Knowledge of Poetry
When it comes to teaching poetry in middle and high school, there’s some good news: virtually every one of your students has had school experiences with poetry. You won’t be starting from scratch, and in fact, some of your students may already consider themselves poets. The not-so-good news is that some students may arrive in your classroom thinking they “hate” poetry or that they “can’t do it.” It may be that for the last seven years or so, they have been writing poems during their class’s poetry unit and comparing themselves – sometimes not-so-favorably – or being compared to the “class poets,” those students who seem to have the Midas touch when it comes to things poetic.
There are several ways to help students who may be stuck to break out of the poetry rut. When you capture the attention of students who don’t believe in themselves as poets and show them how to find the poetry within themselves, this might just become the favorite unit you teach all year.
WEEK ONE: WHAT IS A POEM?
The first goal of any genre unit is to immerse your students in that genre. You’ll want to have as many books of poetry as you can get your hands on. Check out all the books from your local library, visit the school library, scout out local stoop sales, invite families to send in their favorites. Pull poetry books from wherever you can. Have these books accessible for the duration of your unit of study.
For the first week, there are several activities to get your class thinking about poetry and noticing how poets think or “live” differently.
Finding Poems We Love
On the first day of the unit, drop as many poetry anthologies on each table as you can, and ask students to browse through them to find one or two that they really like. Include published student anthologies, poetry web sites or poetry magazines with student writing from previous years. The students’ job is to recopy the poem exactly as it is in the book and post it up on a bulletin board headed: “Our Favorite Poems” or “Poems We Love.” On this interactive poetry board students can “drop” and “add” poems as they find more poetry they love. Be sure students know that it’s ok to copy and post a poem published by another student in a previous year, or even one they may have written the year before.
- Student Assessment: Notice which students are copying exactly from the original and which are not. Students who re-write the poems in paragraph form may not have had many experiences with poetry. Though it’s not necessary to “correct” them at this point, you will need to watch those students as this week unfolds and confer with them about lines, stanzas, and the basics of poetry during reading or writing workshop.
- For Your Reluctant Poets: Share with these students the poetry of Ogden Nash, Jack Prelutsky, Billy Collins or Michael Rosen and allow them to copy and post these short, funny, or odd-looking poems. Poetry may seem less intimidating when you realize you’re laughing too hard to be apprehensive.
- This activity is chiefly about browsing and sharing poetry with each other, filling the room with the sound of it. It’s very social – the goal is to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to hear and read a wide array of poems and gets at least one favorite up on the board some time this first week.
Poetic Dramatizations
In small groups, have students select one or two of the class’s favorite poems and rehearse them to be read aloud. Model and encourage dramatic interpretation. You might even ask students to find music that “feels” like the poem (this leads to discussions about a poem’s tone later in the unit) and play the music in the background. Everyone in the group should have a part and recite at least one line of the poem out loud. The group might choose to read it all chorally, or to take turns by stanza.
You’ve Got to See This!
If possible, show a video of a previous class’s Poets Café, in which students take turns reading their final drafts and sipping beverages as if they were attending a classic coffee house poetry reading, or a similar celebration. Or, find a video (or tape recording) of Maya Angelou or another celebrated poet reading aloud. Try to get your hands on the anthology, Poetry Speaks, a reference text that includes 3 audio CDs. Your students will be treated to readings by 42 poets, including William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Langston Hughes. Alternatively, you might access one of the many poetry websites, some of which have audio recordings of poets reciting their work (e.g., or even student written poetry on teenink.org). Ask students to do some research as they listen and watch: what makes this reading different from most read-alouds? Besides providing inspiration, this also lets the class know what to expect during their own celebration at the end of the unit.
Mentors, Mentors, Mentors
Begin reading, giving, and sharing your favorite poems and poems you think will make good mentors, or models, to your students. Some teachers have their students keep a separate folder or section in their binders called “Mentor Texts” where they keep a photocopy of key poems distributed and discussed in class. Soon students start adding poems that they find on their own and want to take on as personal mentors.
- In reading workshop, look at poems and ask students to notice interesting ideas, phrases, and words. (See Katie Wood Ray’s book Wondrous Words and Shelly Tucker’s Writing Poetry for more ideas on noticing craft.). As a follow-up, the same activity could also be assigned for homework.
- In class, delve into conversations about poems in a whole group or in small groups. Whole class conversations around poems read aloud serve as a model for the kind of talk you’d like to go on in small groups and partnerships. (See Harvey Daniels’ Literature Circles or Lucy Calkins’ The Art of Teaching Reading for more ideas about book clubs or literature circles.)
- Ask students to respond to poems in their reading response journals or notebooks.
- The more you react to and talk about great poems, the more ideas students will have when it’s time to write their own.
The Theme’s the Thing
As you read a poem, help students notice that, while the poet seems to be writing about something concrete, s/he may also be dealing with some deeper theme: love, death, truth, beauty, justice etc. Depending on their level of sophistication, students might be able to discuss symbolism and these universal themes. This discussion gets them ready for later conversations on writing symbolically and metaphorically. To get students thinking about “big idea” themes, try the following poems: “I, Too Sing America” by Langston Hughes; “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas; “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost; or “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” by Adrienne Rich. Check the 6-12 anthology listing and make selections based on your students’ interests. Find poems that you think will strike a chord with them.
This first week is focused primarily on immersing students in poetry. For the most part, students will be reading and discussing poetry. Any writing of poetry during these first few days should be optional. Continue building their confidence and familiarity with poetry and leave it as a possibility for now: “Oh! What a terrific idea! That sounds like a poem. Quick! Write that down before you forget it.”
WEEK TWO: POEMS HAVE THEIR OWN SPECIAL LOOK
Continue immersing students in poetry.
What Does a Poem Look Like?
With your students, generate a chart that lists some of the things they’ve noticed about the poetry you’ve been reading together. Include all ideas. Some ideas that students might suggest are: white space, line breaks, stanzas, skipped lines, capitals at the beginnings of lines, rhyming words, repetition etc. In conversation, note that “rules” can be broken, but it’s important to know the conventions of poetry well. Poets break conventions because playing with readers’ expectations often adds to the meaning and style of poems. Unless they know poetic conventions first, students cannot achieve those effects, and will have a smaller repertoire for writing.
Anyone Can Write a Poem
Sometimes students don’t “get” some of the subtler conventions of poetry – like the notion that each line in a poem is not necessarily a complete sentence. What’s more, even when these lines at first seeming unrelated, they are usually focused around one idea. You can help students understand this by having them explore the work of other poets, and then try their hands at writing their own poems similarly focused on one organizing topic.
You might want to demonstrate this by using a poem like Sandra Cisneros’s “Abuelito Who” as a model. Cisneros, using a long list of descriptors for her grandfather, leaves you with a distinct feeling about both the man and her feelings toward him.
Alternatively, you may want to begin by generating a “format” or “structure” that supports this idea on chart paper and demonstrating, or collaborating with students, to “fill in the lines,” thus writing a poem. This idea expands on the idea of poetic conventions by giving students framework with which to begin, although it is admittedly a rigid structure. Structure can help reluctant poets get started, but you will want to be careful to move students very soon into writing poetry that does not have guidelines as tight as those in the example below:
The Feeling Poem
- Line one: Name an emotion
- Line two: “Smells like. . .”
- Line three: “Tastes like. . .”
- Line four: “Sounds like. . .”
- Line five: “Feels like. . . .”
- Line six: “Feels like. . .”
- Line seven: “Feels like. . .”
- Line eight: Name the emotion
Sample Poem:
Fear
Smells like the skin of burnt marshmallows, smells like burning hair,
Tastes like chalk and Robitussin and vinegar,
Sounds like thunder one-one-thousand-BOOM away,
Feels like numbed cold fingers,
Feels like pressure inside my lungs,
Feels like my body’s not my body, make my body disappear,
Fear
Heather Benson, Grade 7 Teacher
Written as a Class Model
This class model suggests that structuring what students write line by line does not necessarily need to stifle their imagination or feel for words. Once again, it is important to remember that the overall goal is to support students in developing ideas and structures of their own. Beginning with a prescribed format like this may reassure struggling or reluctant students, while other students in your class will be challenged to make this “format” their own. How you choose to approach this first writing activity should depend on the needs of your students. Everyone should have a first draft of a poem by the end of the period, many of which you can use in future lessons as examples and models.
Metaphor or Simile Poem
You can also demonstrate how to build a poem around a single extended metaphor. Begin by writing a metaphor on the first line and then extend the metaphor in depth and detail, line by line. Below is one example written by a student:
Love
Love is a rainbow
Green is the love I have for my friends
Yellow is how I love my sister
Red is the hurt I feel when people hurt me
Blue is how I feel when I lose a love
Purple is the bird soaring above the love rainbow
Pink is a valentine’s love
All of these colors together
Make up my rainbow of love
by Leonce, Grade 6
How Do Poets Use White Space?
Copy “Abuelito Who” by Sandra Cisneros (or choose another poem that you think would work well) onto an overhead.Before letting them read the poem, show them the blurred image on the overhead of the words on the page – or hold up a small version across the room from students. Ask them to describe the shape of the poem. Point out that some lines are longer than others. “Is sick,” for example, is a line in the very middle by itself; it’s also the turning point of the poem. Explain that the poet did that very deliberately. Discuss the poem, its meanings, and WHY Cisneros might have put those two words all by themselves on one line. Chart responses. These may include the following: to make certain words stand out; to make us pause after the word “sick” or other significant words; to make us stop and think; because they’re phrased together; because it’s the main idea. You may want to do the same lesson with other poems, like those found in Arnold Adoff’s book Sports Pages or another poetry collection.
You might follow up with concrete poems or poems in stanzas to demonstrate line breaks; skinny poems like those by e. e. cummings; or EarthDance by Joanne Ryder, a children’s book that shows how the placement of words on a page can echo the meaning of the poem.
Where Do We Make Line Breaks?
Line breaks serve an important purpose in poetry. The end of a line signifies a pause – short when there’s no punctuation, a little longer when a comma occurs at the end of a line, and longest of all for end punctuation such as periods or question marks. Students should realize that where they locate their line breaks is where their readers will place the hanging emphasis of pause; line breaks control poems’ sound and meaning.
When introducing a new aspect of poetry, it’s a good idea to revisit a familiar model; use it to make your teaching point and rewrite it with student help. For example, the “Fear” poem printed above was written within the confines of a particular format, but now you’re going to adapt that format and make it your own. Ask students to help you rewrite the poem, choosing line breaks and stylistic choices that make sense to them. Begin by using the traditional slashes inside the old text to demonstrate where you are revising before you recopy the text.
Smells like / the skin of burnt marshmallows, / smells like burning hair,
Eventually, you might come up with a rewrite something like this:
Fear
Smells like
The skin of burnt marshmallows,
Smells like burning hair,
Tastes like chalk and
Robitussin and
Vinegar,
Sounds like thunder
(one-one-thousand-
BOOM)
away,
Feels like numbed cold fingers,
Feels like pressure inside my lungs,
Feels like my body’s not my body,
Make my body disappear,
Make my body disappear,
Fear
Ask the students to take one of last week’s formatted poems, break it up and revise it as we did in the example above. As you confer with students throughout the workshop writing time, reinforce their use of slashes to show line breaks.
How Do Poets Add Visual Flavor?
Again, go back to a familiar poem (in our case, the “Fear” poem), and this time refer also to poems by Arnold Adoff, Ryder’s EarthDance or to a collection of shape poems. Another choice would be A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems, selected by Paul B. Janeczko, a collection of visually playful poems illustrated by Chris Raschka.Notice that these poets play not only with the lines but also with the style, size and the typeface or font of the words. Rewrite this poem, or show examples of what students might do with their own poems: In this poem, note the larger and smaller font sizes:
Fear
Smells like
The skin of burnt marshmallows,
Smells like burning hair,
Tastes like chalk and
Robitussin and
Vinegar,
Sounds like thunder
(one-one-thousand-
BOOM)
away,
Feels like numbed cold fingers,
Feels like pressure inside my lungs,
Feels like my body’s not my body,
Make my body disappear,
Make my body s-t-r-e-t-c-h
And curl and
Make my body disappear,
Fear
Reading with Fluency
Ask students to read the last version of “Fear” demonstrating with their voices how the words get bigger and bigger and smaller and smaller, how the words s-t-r-e-t-c-h and curl anddisappear.
Looking at the World Differently
Poets see the world differently. Read Naomi Shihab Nye’s “A Valentine for Ernest Mann.” Provide all students with a magnifying glass. Have them look closely at a common object (plant stems or leaves, the skin of a fruit, a squashed piece of chewed gum) and draw what they see. Now describe what was drawn. Make comparisons over time to the original. Students can now use this information to write an original poem.